Call me crazy, but I feel like missing the playoffs in a late-season collapse would be way worse than playing in them with Cruz. Or even losing in the first round because they don’t have Cruz. But I suppose there are many different levels of embarrassment.

As for the column, everything you need to know comes in this passage:

If the Rangers do qualify and bring back Cruz, one can argue that he served his suspension and paid his debt. I don’t necessarily disagree with that since I’ve stated there is a certain unsettling witch-hunt atmosphere to this pursuit of athletes, particularly in baseball, who use substances to try to enhance their careers.

But …

Put differently: “I believe X about Nelson Cruz, but I have a column to crank out so I’m going to give voice to an argument to the contrary that I just got done telling you I really don’t agree with.” Oh, and the argument to the contrary is basically “some Texas Rangers used PEDs 15 years ago, so maybe the Rangers should tie an arm behind their back if they make the playoffs and sit Cruz in order to pay penance. Or something.” I don’t see anyone calling for the A’s to pay for Jose Canseco’s sins, but maybe Texas has a higher level of moral expectation. I don’t know.

How about this: we treat drug suspensions like every other suspension. When a player is done serving his suspension, he’s done. I realize the Giants made a different call with Melky Cabrera, and yes they got away with it, but I’m not sure how making decisions that weaken your ballclub has suddenly become reasonable precedent.

I don’t think I’m a bad fan or that I’m cynical. I just look at the facts on the ground and draw conclusions from them. The overarching fact that seems to matter here — separate and apart from any individual move or non-move the Braves front office makes — is that the Braves, as an organization, have interests other than winning baseball games and those interests, in turn, cannot help but impact the Braves’ approach to winning baseball games.

The Development Authority of Cobb County signed off on a necessary step for the Braves to get the loan on Tuesday . . . Jonathan Smith, deputy general counsel for the Braves, said at Tuesday’s meeting that the project will span about four acres owned by the Braves. About half the land is being leased by Thyssenkrupp for the R&D tower, which the German conglomerate will own.

The other half will house the office building, which the Braves are building and will own, according to Smith. Half the office building is being leased to Thyssenkrupp, Smith said, and the other half is being leased to other companies, though no tenants have been announced yet.

This is all part of the Battery complex which surrounds SunTrust Park and in which the Braves — through a vehicle called Braves Development Company — have a substantial interest. When you appreciate the magnitude of that development and the sort of revenue the Braves are realizing from it now and will realize in the future, it’s hard not to conclude that the Braves did not get SunTrust Park built for them simply or even primarily to become a more competitive baseball team. They got it built for them so that they can become a real estate development company that happens to have a baseball team as one of its many components.

And don’t think that that the relationship between the development and the ball club is some weak and attenuated thing. Check out the Braves’ org chart, as set forth on MLB.com, with my highlight added:

Whatever the legal relationship is between Braves Development Company and the baseball team, both entities answer to Terry McGuirk, apparently on equal footing based on the titles of the people who run them. As such, when McGuirk says, as he did last week, that he “couldn’t be more optimistic” about the Atlanta Braves, it makes one wonder if he means the baseball team or the overall venture, only one part of which is concerned with baseball. Indeed, one of his answers to the question about why all the increased revenues aren’t being plowed into the team was “it costs a lot to build this edifice.” That answer was likely more literal than most people understood.

Sure, the Braves want to win — I truly believe them when they say they want to — but achieving that desire is far less critical to the Braves, financially speaking, than it would be if they did not have office towers to build, own and lease out with favorable tax treatment and other governmental assistance. The hit from missing the playoffs, for example, is a drop in the bucket compared to what it might’ve been back when they played in Turner Field or Fulton County Stadium. At the same time, money that is realized by the Braves, their real estate ventures, or both, can be used in any number of ways. Maybe the baseball team is the priority sometimes. Maybe it’s not.

Observing that does not make one cynical. The Braves are a baseball team with real estate interests. Or maybe they’re a real estate company with baseball interests. The proper way to characterize that depends on a lot of stuff about their financials and their priorities the Braves are likely unwilling to share with us, but it’s a simple fact that they have priorities that have little if anything to do with baseball. It’s fair game, then, to question the organization’s priorities when scrutinizing the baseball decisions they make.